Category Archives: News

Hassan Askari Performs a Mitzvah

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Anti-Semitism is alive and well, even in New York. But so is good Samaritanism: the other day, a Bangladeshi named Hassan Askari stepped in to assist a group of Jews who were being attacked by a gang of ten thugs on the subway.

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What’s slightly amusing to me about this headline is how small Askari is (140 pounds), and how big (and intimidating) Walter Adler seems to be, what with the leather coat and all. But I suppose in these situations there’s a lot of power even in the symbolic act of stepping up and challenging the mob — even if you’re just going to get pummeled by guys who look like this. (Apparently, Askari’s intervention gave Adler time to pull the emergency brake, which alerted the cops.) According to the New York Post story on this, afterwards Adler invited Askari over to his house to celebrate Hanukkah. A nice touch.

Incidentally, before people start speculating, the goons in question are Caucasians; two of them have even been charged with hate crimes–against blacks–before.

(Earlier desi hero story here. Apparentely Amarjit Singh hasn’t been doing so well, but the NY Daily News started a fund to help him out.) Continue reading →

And now a couple of programming notes

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First off, this coming Monday we will be having the first of several “Meet the Mutiny” posts for the 2008 election cycle. That means that on Monday you all will be interviewing J. Ashwin Madia, the congressional candidate from Minnesota right here. He will be periodically checking SM through the entire day to answer your questions (in the form of comments) below the post I put up Monday. You can ask him about his stance on local or national issues, advice about what it takes to run as a candidate, or any other reasonable questions you might have. If you’ve been watching Iowa and New Hampshire from the sidelines thus far, wondering what this election fuss is all about, now is your chance to get involved and educated about some of the issues that our country is facing, including the war in Iraq (of which Madia is a veteran).

Second, the new Indian magazine TrafficLife is featuring a SM post each month, starting with Amardeep’s post in their inaugural issue. Gosh, I never thought I’d see the day when SM was openly distributed below a highway overpass. Pages containing SM blog posts might potentially even be used as part of the home of someone living under than overpass. Now that is deep.

Continue reading →

Ivy-league admissions racket

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The NYT ran a story yesterday about how aspiring Ivy league parents are trying to get their children admitted as athletic recruits … in squash:

Squash pros and coaches say that in the last few years the sport has seen a sharp increase in participation by children and teenagers, some of whose parents seem to have one eye on the ball and the other on college applications. [Link]

Grey lady, please. This is so Opal Mehta meets the Spice Girls, that is, this is old news for subcontinental strivers. Here’s an article from the TOI from 5 years ago:

Do you know the easiest way to book a free seat in an American Ivy League college? No, you do not have to secure the highest marks in your GRE/GMAT examinations. Just being a good squash player, should suffice… over a dozen squash players from Mumbai have made it to the American Ivy League, purely on the strength of the racquet sport…Indians stand the best chance with squash, because, there is little competition in this sport. [Link]

Siddhartha Suchde is the top player at the top Ivy School (Harvard has won 13 out of the last 16 squash championships) where he squashes his opponents with gusto:

Siddharth Suchde ’07 has played at number one in every Harvard men’s match since his sophomore year. Last season he went undefeated in all his regular-season matches and was named Ivy League Player of the Year…

“A turning point came when I was 16 and I got a call from the Indian Squash Federation asking me to play in the world junior championships,” he says. He trained hard and became captain of the Indian junior national team, which finished fifth at the tournament, the best result in India’s history. Suchde has remained on the Indian national team for the past five years. Last December he played at number three for the Indian senior national team at the world men’s team championships in Islamabad, Pakistan. (It meant missing three weeks of classes.) India finished eleventh in the tourney, one of its best performances ever. [Link]

If squash becomes an Olympic sport in 2016, we’d finally have a sport that either India or Pakistan would have a chance of medalling in! w00t!

Continue reading →

Parties to make my heart grow three sizes bigger

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Despite the fact that I’m a total Grinch during the holiday season, I have to acknowledge that this time of year isn’t only about consumption (monetary and culinary) and bad music. It is also a time for helping out those less fortunate. With that in mind I’d like to recommend two holiday parties to our readers (and I shall be at both). The first is tonight at 10 pm. in Washington D.C. at Cafe Asia:grchheart.jpg

In the years past we have worked with many organizations in the Greater Washington area to help bring local children a wonderful holiday season and give them encouragement and assistance in bettering their lives. We have also worked with a number of international organizations to help bring children hope who have been orphaned, affected by natural disasters, displaced by war and or have been born with disability. These organizations through our generous donations have been able to help build schools, provide education and sustenance for kids and provide hope for those that may have had none.

The Sumil Shah Foundation for Children is looking for your support this year for the seventh annual toy drive. Through the Toy Drive we are able to collect numerous toys that are further distributed throughout the local DC area by way of our network. We also collect cash donations which we rely on greatly to help many unfortunate children locally and internationally. We welcome you to visit our website at sumilshah.org to get more information on these wonderful organizations.

The second charity party is in Houston next Saturday night at 9p.m. at Zimm’s Martini and Wine Bar:

Join us on Saturday December 15, 2007 for a fabulous night! We are throwing a charity party benefitting the DePelchin Children’s Center – a Houston area orphanage.

Zimm’s is ours for the night! All we are asking is you bring a toy for the kids or an item off of the orphanage’s needs list. If you prefer you can donate money and we will buy the items for you.

If you guys know of any other charity parties thrown by desi organizations or individuals, please throw them up on our Events Tab (and mention them as a comment in this post). Please remember to drive responsibly when leaving these parties. And remember, if not us, WHO will think of the children? Continue reading →

Bone(s), thugs ~n~ western medicine

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If you’re a scientist, you say that your own understanding of the world comes from standing on the shoulders of giants. If you’re a doctor, it turns out that your knowledge comes from standing on the pilfered graves of dead Indians:

Alas poor Yorick

Medical students across the world rely on anatomical models to become informed doctors. What many don’t realize is that a large number of these models are stolen from graves in Calcutta, India. For 200 years, the city has been the center of a shadowy network of bone traders who snatch up skeletons in order to sell them to universities and hospitals abroad. In colonial times, British doctors hired thieves to dig up bodies from Indian cemeteries. Despite changes in laws, a similar process is going strong today. Throughout parts of Calcutta, many of the cemeteries have been empty for generations. [Link]

Last week Scott Carney broke the story of the human bone trade in West Bengal, with accounts at Wired, NPR and his own blog [Photos here].

Why Indian bones? Well, skeletons are hard to get in the west, so medical schools look elsewhere:

In the US, for instance, most corpses receive a prompt burial, and bodies donated to science usually end up on the dissection table, their bones sawed to pieces and destined for cremation. So most skeletons used for medical study come from overseas. [Link]

In 1985, the Chicago Tribune reported that India had exported about 60,000 skulls and skeletons the year before. The supply was sufficient for every medical student in the developed world to buy a bone box along with their textbooks. [Link]

See, everything really does come from India! Continue reading →

Like a kid in a candy store

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Does stuff like this happen in real life? I thought these scenarios only played out in mid-summer B-movie comedies. From the Globe:

To many women, he is simply “the boy.” They know who he is, even if they do not know his name. They know his story, even if they have never spoken to him.
more stories like this

In the small, all-female world of Wellesley College, Mohammad Usman is famous in this way. He is literally a man among women – about 2,300 women. Usman, 19, is the only man attending Wellesley College this fall.

“A lot of people don’t know his name, really,” said Johanna Peace, a Wellesley junior and the editor-in-chief of the student newspaper, the Wellesley News. “They’re aware that there’s a boy on campus. And if they see him, they’ll say, ‘Oh – there’s the boy.’ “

The boy in question has been living in a dormitory on campus since September, showering in his private bathroom, and, perhaps predictably, becoming something of a folk hero among his male friends. [Link]

You got that? He’s becoming a folk hero. Desis have arrived when some of us begin to achieve folk hero status. So what is it about Usman that let the Wellesley administration let this rooster in the hen house? They actually have an exchange program. Some people want to be exchanged to a foreign school. Those people are stupid. Why go abroad to meet a cute Euro/Australian/South American girl for the summer when you could attend an all-girl school (with more favorable odds) right here?

He wanted to come for the educational experience. (And the women.) He was looking forward to living near Boston. (And lots of women.) To him, this was a chance of a lifetime.

“I thought it would be really fascinating to be the only male at an all-women’s college,” said Usman…

“I want to try new things, and the greatest part of a liberal-arts education is experiencing a wide variety of things. It’s important to me to get the most of my 50 Gs…” [Link]

Brother, we all want to try new things and get the most. I admire your educational ambitions. Once more we are the model minority. But…what do your parents think?

Usman, the fourth child of Pakistani immigrants who own a variety store in the Bronx, enrolled at Wellesley for the fall semester like everyone else. His parents, who dropped him off on campus, were surprised to see so many women, mostly because Usman had failed to tell them that Wellesley was a women’s college. [Link]

Continue reading →

Indian Cricket League

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An upstart cricket league is launching in India today (thanks, Brij01), the Indian Cricket League. I know very little about cricket, but I know good marketing when I see it:

There are six teams: Kolkata Tigers, Mumbai Champs, Delhi Jets, Chandigarh Lions, Hyderabad Heroes, and Chennai Superstars. Each team has a number of players from the local city or region, two players from the national team, and a smattering of foreign players. They’re using the Twenty20 format, which means games will last just about three hours.

Speaking again as a cricket neophyte, I think it’s a great idea — the short games, regional flavor, and general non-stodginess might finally be enough to get someone like myself interested in cricket.

Of course, the quality of play has to be good for it to work. And they’ll have tough competition from another new league starting in April, the Indian Premier League (which is sponsored by the BCCI, and has many more star players than does the ICL). Do cricket fans think the ICL has a chance? Are you excited about this?

(Oh, and I forgot to mention: they have scantily-clad cheerleaders; more smart marketing, or a bit sleazy? Perhaps both at once…) Continue reading →

The first desi in the Oval Office?

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Relax, this post has nothing to do with Bobby Jindal. Banish the thought and just bear with me for a moment. Last week, after one of the candidates I was eyeing as the potential recipient of my vote made a monumental policy blunder (which made me question everything about this candidate), I started giving a closer look to another candidate who had more sensible and educated things to say on the same issue. And that is when I decided that it was finally time (after months of my teenage-like infatuation where I contemplated the perfect post that might get her to take notice of me) to write about an awesome potential development that would take place IF Hillary Clinton goes on to win the White House. I’m talking about that goddess beautiful and capable assistant of hers, Huma Abedin. Huma currently serves as Clinton’s “body man,” similar to the character of Charlie on the show The West Wing. If she doesn’t go on to become the Chief of Staff, she would certainly remain one of Clinton’s closest advisors, with daily access to the Oval Office. From an article I first read in April:

Last June, under an oppressive sun, at a rally to save the Niagara military base at the University of Buffalo, all of New York’s top politicians–George Pataki, Chuck Schumer, Hillary Clinton–poured sweat.

Yet there was exactly one member of the wilting delegation who managed, somehow, to stay cool: Hillary Clinton’s mysterious, glamorous and eerily unflappable aide de camp, Huma Abedin.

“It was like 110 degrees outside,” recalled the source, a political aide who asked to remain anonymous. “We were all just pouring down with sweat. But I have this distinct memory of Huma traipsing in in this blue pantsuit–it was like this wool pantsuit–not a bead of sweat on her brow, not a hair out of place, with everything perfectly organized in her Yves Saint Laurent handbag.”

That sort of fantastical, supernaturally tinged tale is not unusual. Indeed, in the insular world of New York and D.C. politics, Huma Abedin has become a sort of mythical figure. [Link]

Huma was born in Michigan to an Indian father and a Pakistani mother. She interned at the White House in the mid-90s and graduated from GW. If she goes on to become Chief of Staff it is entirely possible that she could broker a lasting peace in South Asia by helping to end the Kashmiri conflict. I’m just saying, if I was at the negotiation table I’d commit to any concession she proposed. Let’s give peace a chance.

“I think she has special powers,” said public-radio broadcaster Katia Dunn, who recently crossed paths with Ms. Abedin and Mrs. Clinton at a café on Capitol Hill.

Ms. Dunn explained that she had heard about the “cult of Huma,” but had never met her. “All of a sudden, I turn around and there was this woman I now know to be Huma. And it wasn’t just that she was gorgeous–she did just sort of have this presence. She stopped me in my tracks for a second…” [Link]

Continue reading →

Taslima Nasreen: A Roundup

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The Bangladeshi writer Taslima Nasreen, about whom I’ve written before, has become the center of controversy again following anti-Taslima riots in Calcutta over the past few days. Exactly why the riots focused on her is a bit of a mystery, since the incident is really inspired by a new violent incident at Nandigram (about which I’ve also written before). At any rate, some Muslim groups are also demanding that Nasreen’s Indian visa be canceled (she’s applied for Indian citizenship; her current visa expires in February 2008), and she seems to have yet again become a bit of a political football.

Since the riots, the Communist government of West Bengal apparently bundled her up in a Burqa (!) and got her out of the state, “for her own protection.” (She’s now in Delhi, after first being sent to Rajasthan, a state governed by the BJP.) The state government has also refused to issue a statement in defense of Taslima, fueling the claims of critics on both the left and right that the Left is pandering (yes, “pandering” again) to demands made by some members of the Muslim minority.

Mahashweta Devi’s statement sums up my own views quite well:

This is why at this critical juncture it is crucial to articulate a Left position that is simultaneously against forcible land acquisition in Nandigram and for the right of Taslima Nasreen to live, write and speak freely in India. (link)

Ritu Menon in the Indian Express gives a long list of outrages to freedom of artistic expression in India in recent years:

These days, one could be forgiven for thinking that the only people whose freedom of expression the state is willing to protect are those who resort to violence in the name of religion — Hindu, Muslim or Christian. (Let’s not forget what happened in progressive Kerala when Mary Roy tried to stage ‘Jesus Christ, Superstar’ at her school. Or when cinema halls screened The Da Vinci Code.) Indeed, not only does it protect their freedom of expression, it looks like it also protects their freedom to criminally assault and violate. Not a single perpetrator of such violence has been apprehended and punished in the last decade or more that has seen an alarming rise in such street or mob censorship. Not in the case of Deepa Mehta’s film; not in the attack on Ajeet Cour’s Academy of Fine Arts in Delhi; not in M.F. Husain’s case; not in the violation of the Bhandarkar Institute; not at MS University in Baroda; not in the assault on Taslima Nasreen in Hyderabad this August. I could list many, many more. (link)

I was unaware of some of those, in fact. Continue reading →

The Toll of the Emergency in Pakistan

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We’ve been receiving tips about the alarming (deteriorating) condition of mutinous Munir A. Malik, who was detained by Mushie’s henchman and held incommunicado for far too long. I scanned a few blogs which are dedicated to Pakistan’s struggle and have information for you, below:

Former president Supreme Court Bar Association of Pakistan Mr Munir A. Malik has suffered renal failure. He has been shifted to ICU in PIMS where he is undergoing kidney dialysis. In panic, Musharraf has lifted the detention orders on Munir A. Malik.
For the last 2 weeks leading lawyers’ and HR organizations worldwide have been calling upon Musharraf to release Munir A. Malik from detention. Asma Jahangir had written in her letter ( to HR organizations worldwide) that Munir A. Malik has been tortured by intelligence agencies.
The News is also reporting that Munir Malik has told doctors that he was served juice in Attock jail. Upon drinking the juice his condition start deteriorating. Since then his kidneys have failed and doctors are also concerned about liver function.
An immediate inquiry needs to be held to determine if Munir Malik was poisoned. For torturing Munir (as indicated by Asma Jahangir) and for keeping him incarcerated in a critical condition for two weeks Pervez Musharraf should be tried for attempted murder.
Finally we ask all concerned people to pray for Munir’s well-being. [Democracy and Freedom]

Ameen. As for others who are paying for their involvement in the struggle: Continue reading →